Cheerleading's latest move

Lisa M. Krieger, San Jose Mercury NewsCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Three decades after the women's liberation movement shattered the second-string status of females in American society, a growing number of modern girls are embracing an activity from the era of homemakers, bobby socks and bullet bras: cheerleading.

Why, ask their puzzled mothers, would a girl choose to cheer rather than run, throw or wrestle?

"It's one of these quandaries for feminists," said Mary Jo Kane, director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota. "If the culture treated it with respect, that would be great."

But this is not your mother's cheerleading.

Today, cheerleading has moved dramatically from the sidelines to front and center. It has been reshaped by a generation of athletic youth raised on self-esteem classes, girl power and Title IX, the pivotal 1972 legislation that mandated boys and girls receive equal sporting opportunities.

Not only has it become highly competitive, it is now comparable to gymnastics' physical training, with its strenuous tumbling runs, human pyramids, backflips, lifts, catches and tosses. Most "all-star" cheerleaders don't cheer--their routines are choreographed to music instead.

"Cheering at football games is boring," said Taylor Zentner, 13, of Livermore, a cheerleader since age 5 and a member of the All-Star Team called Tri-Valley Elite. "The only time you get to do anything is at half-time.

`We'd much rather compete ourselves," continued Zentner, who was among several hundred girls who flocked to Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., this summer to attend cheer camp.

In California, the number of competitive All-Star teams has quadrupled in the past five years, from about 25 to 100, according to Mike Burgess, director of the private United Spirit Association. Training facilities are flourishing to serve the nation's 3.5 million cheerleaders, such as the new Motions Cheer Gym in San Jose and Illusions Cheer Gym in Scott's Valley.

The new cheerleader chic seems exploded upon the pop culture landscape with the 2000 release of the box-office smash "Bring It On," which cost $9 million to make and grossed $68 million at the box office. On ESPN, cheerleading competitions drew an average audience of 455,000 homes, comparable to National Hockey League games.

An important movement in the world of cheerleading "is the struggle to legitimate the activity in the eyes of the public," said Laura Grindstaff, assistant professor of sociology and cultural studies at the University of California-Davis. "The sport versus performance debate has implications for funding, liability and policy issues."

According to Grindstaff, "before there were girls' sports teams, cheerleading was the only opportunity for travel, visibility or leadership. Today, there are lots of opportunities."

Calling themselves athletes, not eye candy, cheerleaders are pushing harder for recognition as participants in an official sport. Twenty-six state athletic associations recognize it as a sport, although California is not among them.

At least 85 colleges offer cheerleading scholarships, ranging from $100 stipends to full-tuition grants at schools like the University of Kentucky.

"It is embraced by many young women who believe in gender equality," Grindstaff said, "and that the struggle for equality has been fought and won."

Cheerleading started as a male endeavor in 1898, when a University of Minnesota football fan led the crowd in a verse in support of their team. Cheerleaders who went on to find fame in other arenas include Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Dwight Eisenhower, Jimmy Stewart and Jack Lemmon.

It was during World War II, when men shipped out to war, that women took over.

Cheerleaders came to represent the American ideal of femininity: wholesome as apple pie with washboard stomachs, perfect teeth and flawless complexions. Stereotypes cast them as blond, petite and impossibly perky.

Then social consciousness suddenly transformed what was once a top rung of popularity into an embarassment.

"Cheerleaders," says a character in the movie "Bring It On," "are dancers who have gone retarded."

But today's postfeminist youth have put a new, diverse face on cheerleading.

It looks a lot like Palo Alto's Hilary Brennan-Marquez, whose mother Terese was a women's studies major at University of California-Berkeley in the early '70s. Like most women of her generation, she viewed cheering with some skepticism. Hillary, 12, loves math, computer design, ska music--and cheering, which she studied as part of a jazz dance class.

"It makes me feel good," Hilary said.

Responded Terese: "I support who she is."

It also looks like San Jose's Saralynn Winslow, a size 12 African-American coach of an All-Star team who lift weights, not pompoms.

Still, Winslow said, much has not changed. Schools make high demands on cheerleaders, expecting them to attend games and numerous alumni events, she said. Yet they withhold privileges that would ease the time commitment.

"At San Jose State you perform all the time during the football and basketball seasons, but you get no financial support other than uniforms," Winslow said.

Team members rarely get the privileges that varsity players do, such as tutoring, laptop computers, parking passes and open access to athletic facilities.

"When the culture starts rewarding cheerleading in the same way in which it rewards women and men's sports--with economic parity and scholarships, not simply relegated to sidelines," said Kane of the Tucker Center, "then I think we have something."

So the most ambitious girls set their sights off-campus, training to win rigorous state, regional and national cheerleading competitions, and often paying private choreography coaches between $500 and $700 for a routine.

"The competitions provide a venue for us to showcase our talent, effort and work," Winslow said.

As cheerleaders' routines become more demanding, they suffer from a rising rate of injuries.

"It has all the traditional elements of a sport: competition, teamwork, training, practice, skills, coordination, communication. It is a year-round commitment," said Amy Love, publisher of Real Sports, a national bimonthly magazine of women's sport based in San Jose.

"If you look at competitive cheerleading today, one can make an argument that it shares similar attributes with soccer, softball and basketball. The level of competition is very serious, with TV broadcast rights and scholarships at certain schools."